I. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an apparatus for the slicing of food products such as ham, sausage, cheese and the like comprising a cutting knife which is driven in a rotating manner and/or which circulates in a planetary manner and whose cutting plane extends perpendicular to a product support surface of a product supply device, with the end of the product support surface at the cutting knife side being formed by a cutting edge part which forms a cutting gap together with the cutting knife.
II. Description of Related Art
Clean and flawless cuts are demanded from such apparatuses, which are usually called slicers and which work at very high cutting speeds. Even at these very high operating speeds and in particular also with products which are more difficult to cut up, such clean cuts are difficult to achieve.
In particular the quality and/or the accuracy of the cutting gap formed between the support surface for the respectively supplied product and the cutting knife, which both rotate about their own axis and circulate in a planetary manner, have an influence on the cutting quality.
In practice, the quality and/or accuracy of the cutting gap is impaired above all by depth differences of the cutting knife which are caused by production and which can easily result in deviations arising with respect to the desired cutting gap size, with the desired cutting gap size being zero in the ideal case.
It is the object of the present invention to design an apparatus of the kind initially named in a manner such that differences from the desired cutting gap impairing the cutting quality can be eliminated and thus an optimum and constant cutting gap can be ensured independently of the respectively used knife and also independently of the respective operating conditions.
In accordance with the invention, this object is satisfied in that the cutting edge part is displaceably supported perpendicular to the cutting plane and is resiliently biased toward an abutment and in that the abutment is positioned and the cutting edge part is designed such that the cutting edge part is at least touched by the knife in each knife passage opposite to the bias applied and is in particular deflected slightly against (or opposite to) the bias.
The cutting edge part, which forms the cutting gap together with the cutting knife, is displaced by a minimal amount from its base position due to this design, with the size of this displacement lying in the range of a few tenths of a millimeter.
To ensure a cooperation free of problems between the cutting knife and the cutting edge part in this connection, the cutting edge part is designed in the entry region of the cutting knife with at least one guide surface which ensures that the cutting knife comes into contact with a slightly inclined surface section of the cutting edge part, whereby interfering friction and unwanted wear are practically eliminated.